


Two Sides, Same Coin?

by jaded_firefly



Series: She-Ra (2018) Post-Season V (Catra + Adora) [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28947855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaded_firefly/pseuds/jaded_firefly
Summary: Bow and Adora walk to the Whispering Woods together a couple of years after the fall of Horde Prime.
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Series: She-Ra (2018) Post-Season V (Catra + Adora) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124105
Kudos: 9





	Two Sides, Same Coin?

The years after the fall of Horde Prime were chaotic ones. People and plants alike worked diligently to repair landscapes and mend mentalities. Debates were held, policies changed, co-ops were started, roads were built, and no one was ever home before [8 pm Earth Time], but peace was finally in the air. 

Bow and Adora walk silently but contentedly, along the path to the Whispering Woods. Swiftwind, walking beside them, takes off, his wings sparkling with color as he does. 

Adora rolls her lips between her teeth then becomes just silent. Bow steps closer, closing the small gap between them. Adora reaches for something in her bag, the clasp catches on fabric flowing from her dress, she struggles for a moment before Bow takes a poke at it. 

“Since when does She-Ra wear a toga? 

Adora laughs. “It is kinda like a toga isn’t it? Fuck.” She lets her bag fall to her side in an anticlimatic surrender. “At least I out-grew my ponytail.” She says, tugging at the ends of his tied up curls, he pushes her away and smiles briefly. 

“Something’s been bothering you on and off since we left Brightmoon, do you wanna talk about it.” 

“Oh, thanks Bow. I don’t know”, Adora pushes her long hair over her shoulders. Ever since she left the Horde her hair had began to grow at an accelerated rate and the last few months hadn’t afforded her any time for hairstyling. Besides, she kinda liked it long. She looks to Bow. 

“It’s Catra again.” Catra had recently left Brightmoon with Sea Hawk to go to Salineas for an extended period. Catra had wanted Adora to come, but Adora couldn’t leave Brightmoon just yet. “She’s upset that I didn’t go to Salineas.” Adora, Glimmer, and Bow had gone to Salineas a week past, it was a short visit. “I didn’t even tell her that I was going to be in the Crimson Waste by the time she comes back when we were there.” Scorpia and Huntara had asked for Adora’s help in rebuilding the Crimson Waste under their dual leadership. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I just, couldn’t convince myself that she wanted to know.”

“It’s all intention. I know the situation isn’t the same with Glimmer and Me, but we both do it, where we’ll derive a bad meaning from an ambivalent one. Assume she wants to know til she tells you she doesn’t, then just trust that she’s doing the same.” 

They arrive at the Wood’s edge. Adora stops walking, heaving a sigh, and puts her face in her hands. Bow stops and walks to meet her, putting his arm over her shoulder. 

“I’m sorry, I assumed you guys were in a good place because you were both okay with the other traveling so much.”

Adora moves her palms down her face to the sides of her neck, she looks down at the path. “We are good. We’re in a good place. It’s more like, I think I’m in a good place about where we’re at but then it’s never a sure thing. There’s constant doubt.”

“I mean it’s what Micah said right? Love is just a battle against separation. So it’d make sense to feel this because you’re in love with her.”

“But where’s this line between we don’t want each other to leave and I don’t want her to leave.”

“I’m sorry I think you lost me a little.”

Adora drops her hands to her side, “There’s no way she loves me as much as I love her,” She looks up at Bow “It just isn’t possible. So part of me thinks we shouldn’t be around each other because, you can,” she opens and closes her fists around her heart, mimicking the feeling. “feel it. There’s this feeling when we’re with each other of that clash and I even think other people feel it too. It’s just in the” she waves her hands over her head, “air or something.” 

“Adora, I don’t think anyone sees you or Catra like that.”

“If it’s not real why does it feel this way?” 

“No one said it wasn’t real,” he draws Adora into an embrace. “Adora, you have a lot going on. You’re not just rebuilding yourself you’re rebuilding a planet--and you’re doing a damn good job at it too.” They embrace a little while longer. 

“Alright, no reason to get dramatic Bow.” They pull from the embrace, and Adora squeezes his hands.

“You’re the one in the toga.”

“Ha!” The two begin walking again. 

“So if you’re not coming to the temple ruins--” Which is where Bow was going. He and his dads had been excavating the site since the heart’s collapse and he did most of the fieldwork. She-Ra came along on the first few digs but had since been pulled away to other affairs-- “What exactly are you doing in the Woods, visiting dear Madame Razz?” 

“Might not be a bad idea. I’m looking for answers about this,” Adora reaches into her bag, with ease this time, and produces a bound notebook. Opening its pages she pulls a pressed mushroom from in-between the pages. She reanimates the mushroom, the dried fungi coming back to life in her fingers. 

“Still getting used to that,” Bow murmurs as he takes the mushroom from Adora. The She-Ra power of giving and storing life essence so colloquially was a very recent development in Adora’s abilities. 

“Where’d you get it? What kind of mushroom is it?” 

“I don’t know, and none of the Mycology books I’ve looked in known either. I do know there’s something strange about it though. If I do the thing” Adora mimics her new ability, “there’s more that comes to and from it. It’s richer. And it’s the only thing that I didn’t plant in my garden. Everything else was carefully picked out. This just showed up.” Adora looks at the fungi a little longer before returning it to its original state and place and tucking her notebook back in her bag. “And I think it came from here, from the Whispering Woods.”

The Whispering Woods, abuzz with noise and music and a rhythm of its own breathed a moment of silence when Adora said so. The two stop to ponder the silence before continuing on their journey into the Woods. 

“So that’s why I suggested we walk together--” Bow mimics Adora as she lifts herself over a particularly tall and tangled root on the path--“Because we both have business in the Woods.”

“So, why not go together.”

“Yeah.” Adora smiles at her oldest friend, “It’s been a while since we’ve done stuff just the two of us.”

“We didn’t really ever. We’ve just been able to map it out on intuition”

He wasn’t wrong. 

“You should write to Catra.”

“Write? That’d take ages to get there. It’d likely just not get there at all. We don’t have the stability for that yet.” 

“What about the messenger-service hawk? I know they’re a little--” He and Adora make eye contact, “On the outskirts of things right now, but I think it’d be good to write all this stuff in a letter anyways so really--” He dives under a branch, Adora goes over, “you’ve got a win-win situation if you decide to do it.” 

She laughs, “Oh is that what this is? A zero-consequences-tied-to-your-actions type of deal? That’s pretty cheap Bowy” 

“What is it with you and nicknames these past couple of weeks? I must have at least five new ones and they’re all from you.” 

Adora chuckles again before saying, “I’ve been thinking about that too, and it’s starting to seem like nicknames and funny epithets for people, places, and things is just how we’ve communicated emotion intuitively, speechlessly, so the more you have, the more communication you get.” 

Bow smiles in her direction, smirks satirically then gazes up through the treetops. Adora slows her pace and Bow does the same before coming to a stop. 

“I think I’m going to go off here.” Though it was impossible to make visible and long-lasting trails in the Whispering Woods there was a common path that they’d pick out, a pattern to navigate the Woods on. 

Bow nods, “Do you want me to come with you?” 

“No, that’s fine, go to the site--I know your dads are impatient for new shit.” They smile at the certainty that would be days of pestering by George and Lance if at least one of them didn’t come back with new artifacts from the temple ruins. They were worried that the Woods were going to swallow the temple site whole and that they were going to do it soon. 

Adora & Bow’s curiosity got the best of them as well--the temple had such a detrimental but important role in the end days. There were things they needed to learn from it, things they needed to record for prevention’s sake. Now more than ever, as decay from the reigns of not on, but two Horde regimes, lorded behind them, a foul tone permeated the air. 

They needed to keep this from happening again. A fall away into the darker side of an animated and breathing planet was all too simple. They worried that the planet, and such its inhabitants, couldn’t take it at this point in the recovery. 

Adora embraces Bow. “Just before sunset? Swiftwind is preoccupied till three quarter from set.” 

“That’s works perfectly. Be safe Adora.”

“I will be.” They grasp arms, Adora’s skin more golden than it was a moment before. Then she walks into the Woods, hands fiddling into her bag before she walks out of sight.

**Author's Note:**

> just a note--timeline-wise "Two Sides, Same Coin" takes place before "Body Language"


End file.
